New Zealand – Dusky Sound

My feet plunged into a muddy pool as we scrambled along a crude track through the temperate rainforest, surrounded by huge ferns as tall as trees and other unfamiliar flora and fauna. The guides warned us it would be muddy – after all, they measure annual rainfall in meters, here in the remote fjords of southwestern New Zealand. Fortunately, I was wearing calf-height muck boots with waterproof rainpants over those. I was just happy to be in the forest, my eighth hike in eight consecutive weekends, spread across three continents and four countries.

We are in Dusky Sound, in the remote southwestern coast of New Zealand’s south island. This region, known as the Fiordland, is almost entirely free of roads and trails, and is managed as a national park and marine sanctuary. We were following a crude trail made by officials involved in the decades-long challenge of eradicating introduced species – particularly predators like stoats, mustelids, and rats – that have been wreaking havoc on the native bird species. For us, the track was a convenient way to explore the rainforest, and to learn a bit more about the region, its ecology, and its history of human occupation and European exploration.

We arrived on the Heritage Explorer ship, the beginning of a ten-day cruise around the coastlines of New Zealand with a Dartmouth Alumni Travel group, part of a larger five-university tour group. I was asked to be the Dartmouth faculty host. It’s a bit daunting, because the faculty from the other universities are experts in forest ecology, geology, and ornithology. I suspect their lectures will be somewhat more relevant to the local situation. 😉

In the morning we hopped in Zodiacs to cruise along the rocky shores and islands of this steep fjord. We caught brief sightings of penguins and fur seals. We were able to hop off the boat for a short walk to Astronomer’s point – a site important in the history of navigation – where Captain Cook and his ship the Resolution spent a few weeks of his second voyage making repairs and taking celestial observations to calibrate their chronometers.

It was later that afternoon when I joined a large group for that hike through the rainforest. Although we never reached the lake rumored to be at the end of the trail, we encountered a small group of colorful kākā (forest parrots), which I enjoyed photographing before we turned around and mucked our way back to the beachside trailhead.

While we waited for a Zodiac to pick us up and return us to the ship, we were closely watched by a lone fur seal, who was content to sit on a rock next to us.

Before boarding the ship, we had had a day and a half to explore Queenstown – a lovely town on the shore of Lake Wakatipu, full of tourists and all the amenities and activities expected by tourists – in the southeastern region of the south island. We were blessed with good weather and great views from the hilltop above town.

See the Queenstown photo gallery and the Dusky Sound photo gallery. Below is a map of the southern half of the south island, showing Queenstown, our embarkation point (the small port town of ‘Bluff’), and the location of Dusky Sound in Fiordland National Park.